Memory care operators are moving from simply providing “good caregiving” to creating a data-rich environment that allows for early detection and on-the-fly care-plan changes that improve their residents’ quality of life.
The pace of clinical innovation in memory care is quickening as new dementia drugs and blood-based diagnostics come to market, and while families grow accustomed to apps that track everything from their dog’s walks to their own health biometrics. As the boomers age, they will demand the same level of visibility into their own care, as will their families.
Senior living operators including Insight Living and Senior Resource Group (SRG) are reworking parts of their clinical care models to bring more data forward, plan more informed care-coordination decisions and build deeper relationships with primary care providers and families to improve residents’ overall experience and health outcomes.
“We are approaching a point where it is no longer optional to be data and technology-focused, and it is becoming an expectation of our customers and their adult children,” said Insight Living President Bryan Ziebart.
Brea, California-based Insight Living has crafted its technology and clinical strategy around three areas: better operational efficiency, improved family engagement and collaboration and using data to advance innovation in aging, according to Ziebart.
To make those goals a reality, Insight Living has created new AI-assisted tools for staff that provide weekly care and activity-participation summaries for residents, while the company also partners with leading universities including Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania’s Sync Labs to help staff anticipate resident needs related to nighttime safety and morning care tasks. Through the company’s nonprofit Integrated Senior Foundation that launched in September of this year, Insight also conducts voluntary genetic testing for residents to identify food allergies and potential genetic markers that indicate cognitive change.
Solana Beach, California-based SRG is taking a similar path by expanding its electronic health record (EHR) capabilities and using new business-intelligence reporting and AI tools to give community leaders “real-time visibility” into residents’ health and well-being so they can identify trends and engagement patterns.
This approach helps build relationships between the company’s portfolio of communities and local physician groups that now round in SRG buildings to bring care coordination and care delivery closer together, according to SRG Vice President of Health Services Sara Padilla.
These changes signal for both companies the future of assisted living and memory care: translating innovation into better health outcomes, stronger relationships with health-care providers and new partnerships that can push the industry forward. Ziebart said this is all in service of providing a “more compelling value proposition” to families as they seek out senior living options.
Creating stronger clinical models with more data
Senior living operators have made tough choices about which technology partners to grow with, sorting through new systems and determining what best fits their operating models in 2025.
Insight Living’s goals of achieving better operational efficiency, improving engagement and advancing innovation in aging align with the company’s memory care plans for frailty detection, dementia-related genetic testing, pharmacy capabilities and increased family communication to gain insights not visible even in a data-rich environment.
Insight Living’s community clinical and life-enrichment teams collect more than 150,000 data points per resident each month. They process that data with large language model (LLM) software to generate a narrative summary. Insight then uses the resulting narratives and underlying data to keep families informed about residents’ activity participation, meals and other indicators that may reflect changes in health.
“I think it’s a fundamental problem in the industry where families are excluded from the conversation and operations and they are almost viewed as a hindrance, but that’s not the case. We know they can offer us insights that we can’t see ourselves,” Ziebart said.
For example, a resident at an Insight Living community felt reluctant to take medications and repeatedly refused them. After staff connected with a family member following an update in the weekly summary, the adult child informed care staff that their loved one preferred to take medications with a light snack, which solved the problem.
In the past, SRG communities operated on multiple systems that over time became “fragmented,” Padilla told SHN. The company has since consolidated its technology partners into a single EHR platform to support higher-acuity residents more effectively.
The company places a strong emphasis on activity and program participation by higher-acuity residents to track potential changes in condition, bringing documentation “closer to the surface” for staff, who can view reports and gain needed insight into changes in a resident’s condition, Padilla noted.
“We were focused on integration last year and we moved all of our electronic medication records into the EHR so it’s all in one platform and provides us a single space to gather this important clinical data,” Padilla said. “To be able to say things are changing with any given resident, that’s a game-changer for us.”
New partnerships emerge as a possible path to clinical advancement
Early-detection tools — from blood tests that detect potential markers for Alzheimer’s dementia to genetic tests that identify genes associated with cognitive decline — give senior living providers new options in their toolkit for improving high-acuity care in assisted living and memory care.
But accessing these tools requires stronger relationships with physician groups and health systems, Padilla said. SRG “continues to monitor developments” in testing and pharmacological advancements for dementia care, she added, and sees future potential for these options going forward. Senior living providers have become the “new kid on the block” as primary-care providers make stronger connections with senior living communities and visit patients in their units.
“We’ve seen the availability to have that health care provider more accessible with more frequent visits and I think it’s really helping us with the change in acuity that we’re seeing,” Padilla told me. “Communication will always be a struggle but if you have one provider coming into your setting, it makes that collaboration for those residents much easier.”
SRG changed its assessment process to include health assessments of residents at move-in, 30 days post–move-in and every six months. With access to more data, Padilla expects clinical leaders are “probably going to see more” change-of-condition assessments “become more frequent” as operators pick up on “gradual clues that something is happening,” she added. Through partnerships with Curana Health and Senior Doc, SRG brings physician groups into communities and allows residents to see doctors more frequently.
“It’s evolved almost into an urgent care where a resident can get in to see their provider much quicker and have their issues addressed much sooner,” Padilla said.
Through the company’s nonprofit foundation, Insight Living has formed partnerships with Stanford University to advance AI tools for earlier detection of Alzheimer’s disease and neuropsychiatric risk. The foundation also teamed up with the University of Pennsylvania’s Sync Labs to launch an in-room AI system that helps staff better predict resident needs for nighttime safety and morning care tasks, Ziebart said.
Insight offers voluntary genetic testing for markers of potential dementia risk at no cost to memory care residents, along with free food-sensitivity testing to gain more insight into a resident’s genetic profile and provide further customization of their care plan, Ziebart said. Another key area that has changed for Insight Living properties involves pharmacy management. On average, Ziebart estimated, residents require multiple medications in assisted living and memory care, which prompted the company to look closely at polypharmacy risks and add safeguards to identify drug interactions that could cause adverse health effects for residents unable to articulate what they experience.
“We want to avoid unintended consequences of certain medications,” Ziebart said.
Memory care innovation evolves from “nice to have” to a strategic duty
In the coming months and years, Ziebart said the senior living industry must evolve its clinical models with new tools and partnerships, noting that these changes must move from “nice to have” features into core competencies and requirements that help differentiate providers from their competition.
Older adults have more choices than ever before for aging in place and accessing services like home care, so Ziebart said differentiating senior living options with these new capabilities is imperative.
“We’re best positioned to help drive innovation in aging and help improve the quality of life for our current seniors but also future generations,” he said. “This is part of our moral obligation as individuals involved in this space to drive innovation.”
In Ziebart’s view, senior living providers hold a wealth of data that many external institutions, such as academic researchers, need to advance longitudinal health studies on aging, something that prompted Insight’s foundation launch and its large appetite for new partnerships with academic institutions.
“I think we’re going to see a number of very promising clinical innovations in memory care and in senior living overall, probably in the next 12–24 months,” Ziebart said. “One big piece of that is the maturity of fall detection solutions and we will be able to push from fall detection to prevention and driving improved length of stay and positive outcomes.”
Padilla sees genomics, blood-based diagnostics and new dementia medications shifting from a novelty to an expected part of the clinical conversation with families in the near future and she said providers must monitor advancements in those areas.
“I think that’s going to be an expectation coming quickly forward and I think as people get more comfortable with these things, we will see it become more common,” Padilla said.
